Writing Spots: Kopi Travelers Cafe

Not everyone has a room of their own, but we all have to write somewhere. I write best in public–in coffeeshops, on trains, in hotel lobbies–places where the people sounds blend into ambient noise.

On Sunday mornings, F and I hike up to Kopi Travelers Cafe for breakfast and writing. Today–like every other Sunday– I will wake F up at 9:20 so he has time to brush his teeth. Then we’ll hop in the car and drive to Andersonville. He’ll drop me off out front so I can be sure to get our table as soon as Kopi opens at 10 (though no one else shows up until 10:15). He parks the car while I wait on the sidewalk for the waitress to unlock the door, like a puppy waiting for the mailman.

I grab our favorite table at the very front of the coffeeshop. As you can see in the photo, Kopi has a carpeted front area with low tables and pillows. It’s the only time I get to write on the floor, and I love it! If I ever do have a room of my own, it’s going to look just like Kopi (though a bit less psychedelic).

We don’t need to order–everyone knows exactly what we want, and within ten minutes, we both have coffee, F has a breakfast sandwich (plain bagel, egg, and “a little bit of cheddar-jack cheese”) and I have my oatmeal (dried fruit, bananas, steamed skim milk). It’s our version of Cheers.

And we sit here together for about two hours. I write, and F sifts through his usual heap of books. He can never bring just one. His Kopi stack is sitting across from me right now, and includes:

The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell,

Selected Poems of Geoffrey Hill,

Krazy Ignatz 1925-1926, edited by Bill Blackbeard,

and three notebooks.

At Kopi, he will pick up this week’s Onion, which he will read cover-to-cover and fill in half the crossword puzzle.